Reviews
Spectacularly Beautiful...This Will Be the English Heike for Our Time and for Many Decades to Come., Though [Murasaki's] setting was the royal Japanese court of one thousand years ago, her characters managed to draw the reader into their passion and terrors in an uncannily modern way. [Tyler's translation is] beautifully readable…it sets a new standard. Not only is this new English edition the most scrupulously true to the original, it also is superbly written and genuinely engaging. We are blessed to have Tyler's help in reading it., Praise for THE TALE OF GENJI "Superbly written and genuinely engaging…one of those works that can be read and reread throughout one's life.", [Tyler] has crafted an elegant translation that remarkably renders this eleventh-century tale in language so lively, vivid and transparent, one could easily believe that the book was written by some gifted postmodernist. Royall Tyler devoted space to explaining, through the introduction and footnotes, nuances of the time, helping help us place them into a modern context. This edition of The Tale of Genji is beautifully realized, both as translation and as a seamless art object., In his elegant new translation, Royall Tyler divides the text into something resembling an opera libretto, with recitatives, arias and dialogue., Though [Murasaki's] setting was the royal Japanese court of one thousand years ago, her characters managed to draw the reader into their passion and terrors in an uncannily modern way. [Tyler's translation is] beautifully readable...it sets a new standard. Not only is this new English edition the most scrupulously true to the original, it also is superbly written and genuinely engaging. We are blessed to have Tyler's help in reading it., Tyler has long shown himself to be one of the finest translators of Japanese in our era. In producing this new Genji translation, he has been able not only to draw upon his own skills as a writer, but also to build on the efforts and accomplishments of his predecessors…the Tyler version is by far the most helpful to the general reader., Praise for THE TALE OF GENJI "Superbly written and genuinely engaging...one of those works that can be read and reread throughout one's life.", Tyler has long shown himself to be one of the finest translators of Japanese in our era. In producing this new Genji translation, he has been able not only to draw upon his own skills as a writer, but also to build on the efforts and accomplishments of his predecessors...the Tyler version is by far the most helpful to the general reader., Tyler's delicate ear for the language of the original helps breathe new life into the story of Genji ., The Tale of Genji set an insanely high standard for anything that came after it. This latest edition is reader friendly at every turn, with generous footnotes, character lists and lots of illustrations to show what robes looked like, or swords, or houses. You have to reach for comparisons to Tolstoy or Proust to convey just what a captivating experience this story can be., A new translation that makes Genji accessible to contemporary readers is a landmark event. [Tyler's translation has clearly been a labor of love. In his beautifully written translation he tries to get as close to the original as possible, immersing us in eleventh-century Japan. Mr. Tyler's translation is richly embellished with footnotes that flag for us everything that Murasaki and her contemporaries would have taken for granted. All in all, Mr. Tyler's translation is likely to be the definitive edition of The Tale of Genji for many years to come.
